


Dust From Stars

by PaxVobis



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Bittersweet, Hotels, Kissing, M/M, Morning After, Morning Cuddles, Not Canon Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Galaktikon II, Podfic Welcome, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-Metalocalypse, Redemption, Sad Ending, so to speak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 14:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18693691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Returned to their lives in the wake of the Metalocalypse, Pickles returns to an old friend, in his eyes redeemed, just for now.





	Dust From Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rattlehead_Rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rattlehead_Rose/gifts).



> This leans pretty heavily on an epilogue concept I had around before Galaktikon II was released, so - basically the army thing talked about in the prophecies with each member of Dethklok facing their worst fear and defeating it, facing Magnus and the Assassin as resurrected generals to Salacia, and wherein the only way to defeat Salacia was to trigger a world-destroying apocalypse; i.e. The Church of the Black Klok was, indeed, an apocalypse cult and that apocalypse was the very real threat the council was uniting to resist. The band would be assured the earth would be rebuilt in the aftermath, and the only one of them resisting is Pickles - his identity is so tied up in the past that losing it _is_ his worst fear. To save the planet, he must learn to let go.
> 
> Ask me about it on tumblr, I don't have time to write it for real!

He awoke to the familiar wheeze of Magnus’ smoker’s lung, that high pitched noise ending in a click with every deep sleeping breath in, and for the moment, Pickles shut his eyes.  It was a hard thing to listen to, that voiceless whistle – so mundane, and still so damning – knowing it meant something inside was terribly wrong.  Knowing Magnus knew it too, and as soon as he woke would cough like he was uprooting them, pulling his lungs out just to clear the tar and decay.  Knowing that there was no real transplant.  That he’d used up all his miracles, and all of Dethklok’s mercy, just to be here.  That Pickles could not stretch it either, not after everything.  That this was it.  Their immortality was in the past, now.

So Pickles lay still beside him.  He opened his eyes slowly onto the warm late morning light, yellow through the hotel room’s faded curtains.  He had risked real shit, coming down here to see him behind the band’s back, and he wanted to savour the few peaceful moments they had before the issue came up again.  Even past all the war and apocalypse, Magnus was not a big investor in peace.  Every waking moment with him, no matter how tender, was underrun by this current that ran through him, this seething, like something lived beneath his skin and could not still itself.  Like he was desperately holding it in, this writhing animal clutched in his hands, inside his heart, inside his skin.  Pickles knew it, held his own.  But while his had calmed with the years, Magnus’ only grew.

When Magnus was asleep, however, so was his animal.  Pickles sat up beside him carefully so as not to disturb him, and saw with a pang of regret that he had stolen all the covers for himself in his sleep, leaving Magnus’ huge form spilling out onto the mattress beside him.  It was just a hotel room, just another hotel room in fucking California, and if you walked into it this morning you’d never know how shitty this thing he was doing was, not like the old days where you’d have to pick across broken glass and bottles, the razor blades, the residue, the hole in the window where the television had been ejected.  In this room there was just a dulled sunshine, strewn white covers, their clothes thrown off onto the floor, an empty minibar.  But what Pickles had done was so much worse than all those trashed hotels; going out, behind their backs, and getting with Magnus again.  After all these years and all the bullshit, _again._   Oy, they’d disown him.  But, y’know.  He wasn’t a stranger to that shit so… whatever.  And _maybe we could just be friends_ never fucking worked, anyway.

People didn’t change.  Yeah, Pickles was still waiting to be proved right on that one, waiting for the knife in his back – preferably metaphorical this time.  People didn’t change, but at the end of it all, there Magnus had been, this terrifying figure at the helm of an enemy army suddenly turning.  _In the end, I am part of Dethklok.  And that I cannot erase._ A crushing dread that had come up through Pickles’ bones from his gut, watching this phantom surrender his immortality to carry them through to the end.  And having to face that this time was really – for real –

But here, in the morning, that click like a metronome.  He couldn’t remember the night, the way he preferred.  Like it had all been a dream.  The mornings were usually better, just a moment of clarity – all he could handle, laying beside someone who should have been dead at least twice over.  Someone who grabbed their animal and twisted it, who changed – _because of you._   That human evidence that salvation was possible.  And it didn’t erase the past.  But right now was –

It was just right now.  Nothing else.  But it was worth a white lie or two.

As he looked down at Magnus and tried only to see the man, and not the years, the faded tattoo, the spreading greys, the clicking stopped short.  Pickles braced himself for it.  After a moment, there was the voice, slow and soft like razors drawn harmlessly over his skin: “Mm, awake?”  As Magnus had felt the difference in his weight on the bed.

“Yeah, worse luck,” Pickles said, holding his hands back from touching him, nothing like that shit.  The other man turned over, looking up at him with barely open eyes, still skimming the surface of sleep.

“Time is it?” slurred Magnus, rubbing his eye, and then smothered a cough in his throat.  Pickles shrugged.

“Dunno.  Late.  Who cares.”

With another smothered cough, Magnus screwed up his face and then threw his arm across Pickles’ lap, turning onto his front beside him with his hair falling over his eyes.  “Come back to sleep,” he growled, and the next thing he knew Pickles was being dragged off of his arms, rolled so slowly into the covers, the hoarse laughter spilling out of him like fuck it.  Like fuck the doubts for now, or the heavy shit.  What could Magnus do that would ever be enough.  No, just now – was the thick curls falling into his face from above, and his hard kiss that was always asking for something, cradling Pickles’ jaw.  And the right now meant Pickles didn’t care what he was asking for.  He just wanted to be asked.

He just didn’t want to lose it.  Any part of it.  This terrible world, these terrible people, the promise that lips could ask for forgiveness.  The part of people that could change, that they could realise and speak that into existence, that they could act to it, and prove it, the word and the gesture and then the gesture again.  Into the end of it all.  A real change – a real mortality – a real life – and swans at the lake – and not fake shit.  Give the money back to the record label, give back the fame and the coronet and the blades and the knowledge, and just be real, in real life, for just one moment.

But then his eyes were open in the darkness, and the click was in his own chest.  That little wheeze into silence.

And cold knowledge.  Of what the Metalocalypse really meant.

That it would all be gone.


End file.
